Dr. Seuss Day!

We had fun day reading and celebrating Dr. Seuss.  Here are some fun photos of the day:

Sharing our Mathematical Thinking

This week, I introduced a game that required the students to think of a strategy to win.  The game is called 1-2 Nim.  The object of the game is to be the one who picks up the last block.  For each turn, you have the choice to pick up one or two blocks.  Since photos do not capture thinking, I recorded some of the student's responses on how they played and if they figured out a way to win every time.  This is a game that is played through the older grade levels.  In kindergarten, I am seeing how observant they can be while playing, since that is what you do when you play almost any game! A couple of my kiddos were being camera shy, but will try and get them next time!

 

100th Day of School!!!

We have been all about math today as we celebrate the 100th day of school!  We created self-portraits of ourselves at 100 years old, made a snack with 100 food items, decorated cool glasses (because you can't celebrate 100 day without cool glasses!!) and worked with the first and second graders to come up with 100 ways to make 100 math equations!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I can't believe we are half way through February!  We have had so much going on that has kept us from our regular routine.  Swimming was a big success for the Bumblebees, and they were quite sad to see it end. We have been talking about space, with the focus being on the motion of the moon and planets.  The bumblebees wrote their first "report" and had to find the information from a variety of texts. We are getting ready to study rocks and gemstones-a class pick for our next topic.  Over the next few weeks I will model the layers of the earth, and how the three different types of rocks-metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks are formed. More recently they have started giving me a list of topics to study-I think human body will be coming up shortly too!

The Shape of Things

This week we have been working on Geometry for math.  We have talked about 2-d and 3-d.  I use terms such as angles, sides, and faces to describe each shape.  The Bumblebees also had opportunities to build 3-d shapes using different kinds of building blocks. For art, we discussed the shapes on our face and created self-portraits while studying our faces in the mirrors. In science, we continue to do research about space.  Yesterday we watched a short video and I created a model to demonstrate how the moon changes shape. Each student is working on a research project about a moon or planet in the Solar System and should have those wrapped up by the end of next week.

We were reading books and gathering facts about the moon.

Math and Swimming

Today we read "How big is a Foot?" as we are learning about standard and non-standard units of measurement. Each student made their own "foot" measure and practicing marking when measuring objects longer than their foot. They have also been practicing with inches and centimeters and documenting their measurements.

We also started swimming today!  Everyone was so excited and got started right away.  Below are some pictures from today.  Thank you parents for having everything they needed and organized. This will continue for the next few weeks on Tuesday and Thursday.

A Culmination of the Past Month

Learning beyond our community and where we fit in.

Budding Authors

Crazy for Pancakes

School-wide Snowflake Breakfast

Can I get more?

Watching the Amaryllis grow and documenting changes

Using non-standard tools for measurement

This is the height of one of the doors in blocks.

Experimenting with area, while creating a pattern

Creating Art with just geometric shapes.